A forty-two minute ad for a Led Zeppelin song that will make you forty-two percent dumber

Will The Outhouse pay indemnities for me for having to suffer through the rundown on The Voice before Revolution comes on? I’m not thirteen anymore, and seeing Carson Daly has to count as some sort of PTSD. I demand compensation! Worse than that, I’m about to find out, is this episode, which is just… so terrible… there aren’t words.

Nora is trying to team up with the rebels about thirty miles outside Philly. The rebels have Miles and are beating him. Miles shows them very little respect, considering he’s bound to a chair. He offers Monroe’s head in exchange for the rebel’s help obtaining Danny. I’m going to be honest, I learned this week that Billy Burke was in Twilight and I’m having a lot of trouble taking him seriously now. Anyway, he smooth talks the rebels into helping.

Miles gets sauced in preparation for the big day. Charlie tells him to take it easy, and he says the obvious: that this plan is cockamamie. Again, the same argument they have every week. This week it should be more dramatic, since they’re heading into the militia base, but it’s the same ol’ same ol’. Miles stresses about having to face Monroe and Charlie is confused, because somehow she forgot that they used to be bros. Meanwhile, there’s some target practice and Aaron and Miles and others plan to burrow under the city walls.

After a commercial break, we follow some rats into the city. Colonel Anderson Cooper (not looking up his name because I don’t care) talks about how he hopes he gets to kill Monroe or Miles by the end of their mission. The subtext here is that both would be ideal. Charlie asks Nora about Miles and Monroe’s relationship. Nora explains that Miles tried to assassinate Monroe, but failed to pull the trigger. You know who didn’t fail to pull the trigger? Charlie, as she stepped on a landmine. Ruh-Roh!

Neville comes over to babysit Rachel while she uses the pendant to build… a thing. A weapony thing, I guess. She yammers about something or other, and Neville asks her again when it will be ready. She assures him it will be soon. I can’t help but feel she’s pulling a Tony Stark here.

The others set out ahead while Charlie applies pressure to the booby trap (heh, booby). Aaron and Miles refuse to go on, obviously, because tension, or something, while Nora carefully dismantles the landmine. There might be a trap within a trap (trapception? Do we still make that joke, internet?), so they all have to run after Charlie lifts her foot. Indeed, there is an explosion. Charlie and Miles are trapped in the underground passage, with Nora and Aaron nowhere to be found. Christopher Nolan called, he wants his disappointing intellectual property back.

Don’t worry though; Aaron is walking about with some nineteen-year-old. He questions her about the US. She tells him that her dad was from Syria, and he taught her to fight for freedom or something. She asks why he’s fighting. He realises he’s not entirely sure why.

We all keep marching along. I am incredibly bored. When did everyone get reunited? When did that happen? Nora freaks out about alligators. Aaron realises they’re not getting enough air. The tunnel cut off their access to good ol’ O2 and now they’re going to die. That… seems unlikely. At the very least, it set in awfully soon for how large that tunnel is. I guess the explosion used a lot of oxygen? Aaron hallucinates something (probably) but pretends otherwise.

Everyone is sort of delusional. Their torches are going out due to lack of oxygen. Miles trips out a bit. Hey, did you know watching a bunch of people die slowly of carbon dioxide poisoning is super boring?

Oh my god this is going to be an actually trippy episode. I guess that explains why they pushed the Led Zeppelin so much in the previews. Miles sees Monroe, except obviously he doesn’t really. They hug.

Monroe asks Miles if he looks like shit because of the whole “lack of oxygen” thing. They’re all buddy buddy, and Monroe even calls him “bro.” He asks if it was worth it, leaving the militia and trying to kill his best friend. He asks why he did it, and Miles said he went too far. Monroe says he knows his dirty secret- that Miles might be willing to give up his friends if he was given a chance to return. And that he’s scared that will happen.

Charlie wakes Miles up from his OBVIOUS hallucination. She tells him to get his shit together and get moving. Nora, meanwhile, is telling Aaron the same. He’s hallucinating that she’s his implausibly hot Asian wife (IHAW). IHAW asks why he was so strong for Charlie and not for her. Aaron ignores his hallucination and keeps walking on, albeit with a look on his face like he’s being haunted.

We’re back from commercial and I continue to regret that I have to write about this. They find a door, which looks rather bullet-riddled, but I guess oxygen deprivation precludes noticing totally obvious warning signs. Miles and Col. Cooper bust through it, but then the Col shoots a bunch of people. Turns out, he’s on the militia’s team, and he’s here to take Miles (alive) to Monroe. The colonel apparently knew Miles briefly, in the sense that Miles shook his hand when he got promoted. Charlie and her besties get through the door, and Charlie, wielding a crossbow, shoots the colonel in the heart, which he promptly returns with a gunshot.

Cut to Charlie waking up on a retro looking couch. Her dad is nearby, so again, OBVIOUS HALLUCINATION. He tries to pinch her to prove that it’s real. He tells her to get Maggie and Danny. Charlie is all, “Was that all a dream?” No, Charlie. It wasn’t. If it was, I’ve wasted an hour of my life every week since September for NOTHING and I’ll be EXTRA mad at this already IDIOTIC episode.

Since that scene was STUPID, Miles is in the real world trying to wake up Charlie. He’s super upset. Again, this might be sort of emotional if I gave a shit.

Nora says that the bullet grazing combined with the Oxygen loss is what led to her pointless unconsciousness. Miles continues to coax her awake, but she keeps slipping off into her past life hallucination, which his voice is spilling into. Ben seems upset that she’s hearing her uncle. She recites the entire plot of this show up until this point, reiterating that she’s dreaming. She gives HallucoDad a hug and tells him she loves him, which is stupid, because she made him up in her brain and it’s not like he’s really there hearing that. She wakes up in the real world, much to Miles’s relief.

Charlie reveals that she heard Miles calling to her, and he saved her. How sweet, I’m sure. She says she would have stayed in her made up dream world if she hadn’t heard him, because she’s still stupid.

The group keeps climbing the stairs, preparing to ambush the militia, all four of them. Three really, since Aaron barely counts. I guess we’ll find out what happens next week.

Rachel continues building her amplifier (i.e. the weapony thing I mentioned). Monroe is asking about how exactly the amplifier is going to work. He got a tip that perhaps she is not up to what she says she’s up to. The guy she ratted out (sort of) comes to look at her machine. He says it’s a bomb. She says he’s lying, but he insists it’s a time bomb, set to take out Monroe instead of Rachel. Monroe gets sort of rapey. Monroe says he’ll get Dr. Jeff (wait, did he call him that? I thought his name was Brad) to build it and that he doesn’t need her anymore. So she decides to make him need her by killing her friend. Nice. I appreciate her ruthlessness.

Remember how I said I wished the writers would better develop the characters? Make them interact with each other more, let us get to know how they feel about each other? Sending them on a hallucinatory journey is not the way to do that. Seriously, is there a lamer way of examining the psyche of these people?

Next week: the thankful conclusion of the fall season, and probably enough cliffhangers that when January rolls around, I will be mildly re-invested. I hope.

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About the Author - DrImprobable

Before you ask, no, Dr. Improbable is not that kind of doctor, and will not be diagnosing your genital warts today. Seriously, put it away. The doc does more of the "mad science" brand of doctoring, though one day hopes to be that "time and space traveling" kind of doctor. In the meantime, Doc passes time cloning things, memorizing acronyms, and using large magnets. When not plotting all the terrible ways to destroy the human race (particularly those found on public transportation), the doc kills time by watching television and making sarcastic commentary on it.